Merchandising in the Age of Spotify
By and large, if you make music, you make money through licensing, touring and merch sales. Everyone has heard how small the payouts from Spotify are, and while I began making music when people still bought physical CDs, (those were little discs that stored roughly 9,100% less music than your phone storage) those days have long past. And I think, on the whole, the industry is better for it. I feel as though my reach has expanded exponentially and I think the threshold to releasing music continues to get lower and lower and I ALWAYS feel like we benefit by removing barriers for creative people to push out their art.
That said, with the virus keeping everyone inside, touring to promote a new record and sell T-shirts is kind of impossible. So what do we do to combat the obvious obstacle of a global pandemic and still share our music and art and generally apathetic worldview with as many people as possible?
Here’s the easy junk I’m trying.
ONE
If you haven’t seen my blog on releasing music online, you can read it here: Use CDBABY. But if you have a record you’re sitting on, I still think you should release it. People are trapped at home and honestly more likely to sit with your album than they normally would be. You can also be recording now. I use a Scarlett 2i2 and LOVE it. It interfaces well with garageband on mac and if you don’t want to buy a mac, Garageband works a treat on the iPad (the $299 cheap one) and an iRig2 will do a great job for guitar. You can create some incredible music despite not having access to a full blown studio and, in times of stress, I think creation helps a ton. Releasing your music won’t hurt your ability to perform the songs live later and gives you a head start on the next couple of parts…
TWO
Play live shows on Facebook. It’s dead simple. You don’t need a crazy setup to make it decent, phone mics are okay and it does a couple of cool things for ya.
This is a stock image to make the dry parts of this look exciting. Is it working? Did this work?
Firstly, Facebook alerts people to live events with more frequency and efficacy than almost any other type of post. It pops up as a notification, reminds people and encourages them to hang around. Facebook helps push you out there and that’s huge.
Secondly, it allows you to perform more intimately than we are generally able to. This can vary depending on what venues you’re able to book, but generally speaking, the battle for attention on your songs is a tough one. There’s alcohol, arcade cabinets, pretty girls and football games competing in the bar you’re playing in and the sound mix is awful because the acoustics are trash and the bar manager insisted you use their PA that has consumed more spilled beer than their patrons in the last six months.
On a live stream, the people listening want to hear your music and they are hanging out with you and chatting with you and allowing for a unique opportunity to share the story of your songs and the writing process in a very personal way.
So stream. And post up a CashApp link in the description (NOT THE COMMENTS IT WILL GET BURIED) and don’t push for donations but make people aware they can throw money if they want. You’ll be surprised how generous your fans can be and this helps a TON.
THREE
Get some decent merch and a website on which to sell. This requires more investment than the rest and will also feature the slowest return so it’s listed last, but I think it’s important. There are a TON of print to order shirt places online that can reduce your cost but I want to talk about why I chose to go with a local print shop (Free Cheese Prints) for my own shirt designs. (See those here)
The cost locally is always going to be lower. It’s slower making up a profit because you are warehousing the shirts instead of letting someone else like threadless do it. You also handle shipping, which can be more work. BUT, in exchange for a little more time on your part, you can operate at a MUCH higher level of quality (I suggest Bella + Canvas shirts for how soft and durable they are. Seriously, these are heavenly) and profit. You don’t even need to rush moving anything because the leftover shirts can be sold when you finally start touring again.
And this time when you tour, you’ve established a more personal relationship with fans of your music, they know you better because of live streams, they are invested in what you’ve created and hell, we all kind of form a trauma bond through this crazy crisis we are all trying our best to survive in.
Last thing, if you have a website, throw up a donate button and link your store so people can find out how to support if they want to. Make it easy on them. (Don’t have a website but want one? You can pay me to build one for you. Send me a message and we can talk. I use Squarespace and think you should too, regardless if you hire me or do it yourself.) And throw a CashApp link on your Spotify (here) so people can donate directly when listening. If you hurry, Cash App MAY throw an extra hundred bucks your way after your first donation, but the funds could run out soon so don’t rely on that bit. More details in that link.
Thanks for reading, I hope this helps. If you have any other cool ideas for reaching fans and spreading the musical love, drop a comment and let me know what you’re doing and what project you’re working on. Share your tunes and let’s all support each other as much as we can. I probably love you.
(Free Cheese Prints found ways for me to reduce my printing cost, raise my quality and feel super excited about the shirts I have and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Our exchanges over email were fast and they delivered to me super quickly. Fans have told me how much they dig the feel of the new shirts and I absolutely will be using them again in the future. Find them here.)